1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to quality control systems and methods, and especially to a computerized quality control system and method capable of correcting quality problems by employing electronic communications.
2. Description of Related Art
Because competition can become highly intense in today's globalized economic society, product quality has become one of the most important factors relied on by manufacturing enterprises in maintaining and increasing market share. It is widely accepted that quality control should be carried out at all stages in a supply chain, from purchasing of raw materials to manufacturing and distributing of finished products. In order to achieve complete control of quality problems, both preventive actions and corrective actions are usually needed. Based on an understanding of a product or process, preventive actions address inadequate factors that may produce nonconformance. Corrective actions are aimed at eliminating the root causes of detected nonconformance, in order to prevent recurrences.
An example of the art of performing corrective actions in automated quality control is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,245,554 issued on Sep. 14, 1993 and entitled Integrated Quality Control Method and System. The patent discloses a method and system for explaining causes of failure of a product. An integrated quality control method is provided for determining causes of failure of a product, the method comprising the steps of: collecting information relating to failure of the product and measures taken to correct the failure; collecting information relating to manufacture and distribution of the product; combining the information relating to the failure and measures taken to correct the failure with the information relating to the manufacture and distribution of the product; and analyzing the combined information to determine causes of the failure of the product and predict possible future failures.
One disadvantage of the above-described method and system is that little consideration is given to the efficiency of data flow in the system and the cooperation of operators participating in the corrective actions. This can result in inefficiencies in quality control. Generally, corrective actions involve various professional teams and individuals such as product quality engineers, failure analysis engineers, and quality assurance managers. Each team or individual performs designated corrective action tasks. In addition, correcting quality problems is often a difficult process, and comprises procedures including describing quality problems, analyzing failure causes, performing corrective actions and confirming results of corrective actions. For efficiency, it is vital to utilize an electronic network to timely transmit data on corrective actions to corresponding operators involved, and to timely receive confirmations and responses from the operators. Therefore, what is needed is a computerized quality control system and method which can correct quality problems efficiently by employing electronic communications.